


some gods, some masters

by quisquam



Series: obsequor [2]
Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Gen, a repost of a previous work, some background f!courier/boone angst happening here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-17
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-24 11:22:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,041
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14953730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quisquam/pseuds/quisquam
Summary: Even after all of it, Six kept coming back for Ulysses.





	some gods, some masters

**Author's Note:**

> This is a repost of something I published previously under the same title. Consider it a non-linear companion piece to _superfuture_.

Even after all of it, Six kept coming back for Ulysses. It would not do, she thought, to let him die on that lonely cliff. 

She made the four-day hike to The Divide once a month, brought him fresh food and Radaway. He accepted it without thanks, the unspoken ‘why’ hanging between them in the air, but sat with her in the evenings none the less, told her stories of his people, taught her to read his braids. She learned how history weighed heavy on his head, a glittery shard of bomb glass for each Divide resident he had loved, saw that he was childless, saw the large twist at the nape of his neck; _‘no siblings, no parents’_. He taught her about the gods the Twisted Hairs had known, The Mother, who gave them their records, The Father, who showed them how to scout and to hunt. He bowed to the East three times a day, repeated prayers in a language neither of them recognized, his hair falling around his face like a halo. 

Forgiveness was not her strong suit (Benny could attest to that), and it was not his either, but somehow he let her pay her penance, just as he paid his. “Had a brother once. They took him as a camp slave” he said, touching the knot at his neck, “wore a collar, even I couldn’t save him from that. Always tried keep him safe,” He shook his head, beads clacking with the movement, “couldn’t hide him from death forever”.

Six wondered how long she would be able to hide Ulysses. She’d resupply at Desert Rock, fresh water and food, and walk the final day twenty pounds heavier and with her heart in her throat. Every time she worried she’d find him dead in his bed ( _or worse, gone_ ), but every time he was there, wearing the same ridiculous coat, long legs dangling over the cliff edge. She tried to pull him back to the Mojave, tried to lure him back with the stories of the refugees she’d met, men who tied their hair into tight knots, women who sold pottery with sun and moon motifs. He would just look at her in response, dark eyes piercing above his gas mask, and smile sadly (she assumed it was a smile), “Can’t turn back the clock, Courier. Know that well as I”.

She knew.

Sometimes she’d see Boone, back from one caravan circuit or another, and he’d raise his hand in greeting, quiet as always. As if he hadn’t crept into her room the night before they left for the Dam, buried his face in her hair and whispered _please_ so fragile it sounded like breaking. He’d followed her to the Dam, watched her put a bullet in Lanius’ head, watched her send Oliver running back to California, and left two days after that. In the end, he was too much of a California boy to meet her eyes. As if they weren’t both walk-the-wasteland fucks, too scarred by the Mojave to ever return home. 

Her days all began the same; sitting in front of Yes Man’s monitors, staring into the face of her future, the robot son she’d never asked for, the city she never really wanted. Sometimes she wondered if she should have left House alive, wondered if she should have handed Vegas off to the NCR, but then she’d think of the Khans, far from the Mojave and safe at least, think of the children in who used to run through Freeside, stomachs distended from malnutrition, crouched over the corpse of a rat or a dog, faces bloody and desperate. People smiled when they saw her, called her a freedom fighter, remembered her name, remembered her armor. The Courier who wouldn’t die, the angel of New Vegas. 

The world called her, and eventually she would find herself on the road again, the endless, empty expanse of Route 95 pulling her towards the Divide. When Ulysses ran out of stories she told him her own, the stories that the Old Ones told children, about the Earth God and Lord Guan, stories of hunger and fear, stories of the home Two Books Kuo and Old Lin had been ripped from. History ran thick and heavy through the Provinces, and she shaved pieces of it off for him, handed her past to him like gemstones. He would cook, or she would, the desert food he grew up on, or pale imitations of her favorite childhood dishes. 

She told him about Boone, tried to keep the bitterness out of her voice, and failed. He watched her, unreadable as always, “People in the Divide loved and lost too, Courier.”

“Christ, can’t stop salting that wound, huh?”

“Won’t do well to forget. New Vegas isn’t the first town you breathed life into. And besides”, he leaned back and stretched his legs, shifting his weight onto his palms, “no use in trying to convince the Bear you were right.”

Perhaps not. 

And besides, she never really saw him anyway. She’d pass him on the streets or meet his eyes across the room in the Tops, and he would look away or she would, and she would be left crawling back to the Lucky 38 with her tail between her legs. The liberator of New Vegas, laid low by some caravan guard. It felt stupid, it felt juvenile, it felt like she was fourteen again, starry-eyed over the neighbor boy. She’d throw herself into work rather than think about Boone, roads needed patrols, towns needed aid, new trade contracts needed to be negotiated with the NCR. 

Always the Divide called to her. She knew Ulysses was right; it belonged to her as much as New Vegas did, the howling wind and the Marked Men were a part of her, just as the glow of the Strip was. She could never truly get the dust out from under her nails, never fully clean the blood out of the treads of her boots, her blind eye and damaged face would never look right among the gamblers and tourists.

Perhaps that was why she kept coming back to him, wandering back to that lonely cliff, bent under the weight of her sacrament. 

It felt like benediction.


End file.
